A Christmas Carol
by Cairnsy
Summary: This is your life, the angel says as it whisks Ryuuji away. Your life, without you in it.


**Notes I:** Very much based on the manga, which gives us a much darker take on his character.**  
Notes II:** I haven't written Ryuuji fic in so long! It hasn't always been because of a lack of want but a complete lack of ability – I lost my grip on his characterization and just couldn't write anything remotely in character. This isn't exactly in character either, I think, but it's a step in the right direction from where I was. This is just a short character piece/'what if' scenario for a Christmas treat. 

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**A Christmas Carol.**_  
This is your life, the angel says as it whisks Ryuuji away. Your life, without you in it._

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This is your life, the angel says as it whisks Ryuuji away. Your life, without you in it. The shop (twisted and bleak, his father's caricature stretched demonically above the opening façade) still stands, perhaps more twisted and bleaker than Ryuuji remembers but with cheerier, commercial music that sounds like it has wheezed its way out of a can and is sucking in all the available, nearby air. His father (that man) is there at the doorway, no shades of light to offset the black, no emotion other than rage and betrayal and – oh god make it stop – hate that burns from a never exhausting pit of hell.

There is no Ryuuji at his side, all sleek sex and dazzling smiles, because this is Ryuuji's life without Ryuuji. Instead, there is a young girl with her hair in long, curled-at-the-tips ponytails who sells her father's wares with lean legs and an indecently short school girl skirt. And Ryuuji remembers, remembers how his father tried that on him once (the short skirts and pretty ponytails, Ryuuji has always had a pair of lean, long legs all of his own), but found it attracted the wrong kind of customer; the ones who were all for taking but didn't like to pay.

His father is in a different line of business, and while Ryuuji knows he is willing to sell anything if the price is right (once you start with your soul, there are so many _interesting_ places to go), there is little he is willing to give away for free. There is certainly nothing free about the girl's picture perfect smile and tempting tilt of her head, although Ryuuji pettily likes to think that he sold for more.

He reflects – just briefly – that this is maybe something he shouldn't take pride in, when he is being whipped away again in a halo of light and triumphant of horns. He lands in a field, giant holograms phasing through him, fighting beside him, slicing and dicing and knocking the world that little bit off its axis as its very nature is fought for between a ten thousand year old pharaoh and an Egyptian kid with a grudge. Ryuuji dodges the next attack that isn't meant for him (they're never really meant for him, he is always there just by association), but not the one that follows. In the second the blade slices through his throat, Ryuuji feels something cathartic and endless that almost makes sense, and he thinks that he could stay in this moment of nothingness for a little bit longer.

Ryuuji doesn't remember closing his eyes, but he opens them to a dinner party. There is a table loaded with food and presents and things that glitter beneath the Christmas lights, and there is his angel off to the side, drunk on eggnog and hitting on anyone who passes too close. He isn't surprised his angel is a lush, not with the here-one-moment-there-the-next-oops-did-I-mentally-scar-you-along-the-way? morality tale that is being spun for him on silver threads that are threatening to snap under the weight of their own unimaginative purpose.

All his friends have gathered together at the table, Ryuuji notices, although they appear older than he remembers them. He frowns, because there are no game cards anywhere, no evil monsters trying to kill them all/overly wealthy boy-millionaires taking out their daddy issues on innocent victims, and so Ryuuji isn't sure why they are all there when the things that he has always thought bound them together are not-

He wakes in an apartment, in Los Angeles, on the other side of the world and in a different life from his father, his friends, the end of the world (except they won, Ryuuji remembers, although sometimes it is easy to forget that this is what they were fighting for and not trying to defeat). He gets out of bed and showers, before slipping into his elegant kitchen and pouring himself a glass of cold, bubbly Champagne that always tastes better after a long night dealing with what this city passes off as angels.

And he's awake, truly awake because his eyes are open and he can see the Champagne bottle and the vivid sunrise through his floor-to-ceiling windows, and he's pretty sure that the threaded heartbeat he can feel is his own. What he doesn't know, he realises with the clarity that only alcohol first thing in the morning can bring, is if this is Ryuuji's life or his life without Ryuuji in it.

They both feel exactly the same.


End file.
